Things I Wish I Knew About E-Collar Training Months Ago
My wife and I are proud doggo parents to a rather adorable french bulldog. I’d name names and post pictures but, as part of my goal here is to remain relatively anonymous, so similar-ish stock photography will have to suffice for now. Unfortunately, she’s very well known within our social circles, both by look and by name, because she is so ridiculously adorable.
As adorable as our lil’ potato is, boy is she a pain in our asses. We raised her from her puppy days and there was a stretch there where we didn’t know if we could do it — she was such a struggle to get acclimated to her crate at night, every night was a howling marathon. She also bit the absolute hell out of us whenever she got riled up and chewed anything she could get her moutb around. We got the advice to take her to puppy classes, stat, and we did, and it was amazing.
The puppy classes were transformative, between the tricks of the trade we learned, and the valuable redirection and obedience techniques which we instilled in our pet. It only took five lessons and we were dealing with an almost completely different animal, one we felt much more able to manage, much more in tune with, and one that was increasingly receptive to our needs.
According to our trainer, the next step was e-collar training. Both my wife and I, despite investigating it all, just felt like it was kind of mean and excessive, and just never felt like we should go down that road. We were concerned we’d make our pet into an automaton, strip her of her personality, make her miserable. We took a year off from training only to find ourselves back again, this time more open to the collar. We learned that many of our fears were misconceptions, and that by avoiding this more intensive training, we were honestly causing more harm by shouldering more risk. You see, as much as we had made progress with our dog, there were far too many situations remaining that were highly concerning to us, where proper training would all but eliminate bad outcomes.
Our Motivation
Our foremost worry was recall — our dog had managed to slip out of her harness a number of times; thankfully all were within our backyard, but regaining control of her was very difficult. Had these happened outside our fenced-in property, I have no idea if we’d have ever been able to get her back. She has no survival instincts, she would eat a bowl of thumbtacks if you set them in front of her, and would beg for seconds. When she got off-leash, I had to chuck babybel cheese at her like a pokeball to get her distracted enough to capture her. No way was she going to approach me on her own until she was good and done exploring every hazard. Having an e-collar can be like an invisible leash that lets us work difficult animals up to off-leash training.
Second, she can be really excessive with us and guests at times, jumpy, bitey (playfully, thankfully), and energetic, where all the commands in the world don’t reliably curb the behavior because eventually her ears turn off. Again, she never gets hurtful but her paws are rough and her nails tend to catch your skin if you aren’t wearing pants, and she is happy to come at you with the totality of her 25-lb bowling ball chonk of a frame. It is a whole lot if you aren’t ready for it, and even if you are, it can be bothersome.
Finally (and honestly a root cause), compliance with commands remained a challenge, despite practicing a lot of enforcement and followthrough with our earlier training, our dog simply sees obedience as optional, which leads to a lot of trouble, like her freaking out when another dog is around and sanding her paws down till they bleed by fighting the leash with all her strength on the pavement. She only seems to listen when food is involved (much like her dad).
Shocking News
The e-collar is a game changer, if you’ve ever considered going down this road for your dog and been on the fence, don’t be, let me help persuade you. The first thing to know is that this is not a “shock” collar in the way that most people imagine, in the sense that a painful jolt is not delivered. An e-collar is a TENS unit essentially, which yes, applies voltage to muscle, but directly, inducing contractions, so it’s more of a tapping or squeezing sensation.
We insisted on trying the unit on ourselves before putting it on our dog, and on all the strengths the dog would feel — honestly it was no big deal at all. I was very apprehensive anxious about what I would feel, but the lower settings honestly tickled. Let me just say that if my wife wanted to slap this on me and train me with cookies, that would make for an exciting weekend.
The e-collar isn’t painful, at it’s lowest levels, it feels like little sparkles inside of your muscles, these odd micro-spasms in the fibers that just tingle weirdly. As the intensity is dialed up, it presents as an awkward feeling contraction, like an all out muscle twitch. At the higher levels that we tested it is an all-on uncomfortable contraction, but nothing “painful” — lets just say it gets your attention and you want it to stop, but you don’t suffer in any way, the sensation is alarming and annoying only.
When training your dog, the e-collar is never utilized as a punishment, that is the exact opposite of how it should be used. Different trainers have different approaches, but ours literally has us tie stimulation with the e-collar with reward. That is, we teach our dog that feeling that sensation on their neck means a treat is coming by activating it when we praise and reward as well.
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The e-collar stimulation level is variable and training uses the lowest that your dog will reliably respond to. When there’s a lack of response, levels can be increased of course, but there’s an upper limit you should use; you’re not going to just crank it higher and higher until your dog is jumping out of his or her skin. The idea is to use it as a form of pressure, and to combine it with other forms of pressure; yes, you do need to crank it up a bit in enough non-compliance events to demonstrate that you are willing to go that far and that the sensation just isn’t going to stop — absolute compliance is a big part of training. By no means though do you typically operate on a high level or even need to go down that road, in fact, we have never used a very high level, and we rarely if ever need to exceed the normal setting we have it on, and when we do, rarely by more than one level higher.
Selling Points
The ultimate magic trick as far as I am concerned is that in a worst case scenario, you have extreme pressure on demand if you need it. When your dog is confronted with a distraction that is drowning out it’s alertness to the e-collar, and an emergency strikes, like your dog is bolting into traffic, you do have the option of raising the stimulation to a level that you would very much not want to feel on your own neck. While we have never tested this (nor intend to) with our dog, it would presumably be a break glass scenario you could escalate to in order to save your pet’s life if they were not responsive at the appropriate level. Obviously the hope is that you’ve done so well with your training that very modest stimulation will interrupt your dog and make him or her responsive in dangerous situations, but when your dog manages to get off leash somehow, you still have the collar on a higher setting as a nuclear option. As our trainer explained, when a dog is running, they will head in the direction their head points, so anything to bring their attention back to us, even if briefly, buys precious seconds of positive distraction to help us regain control of a bad situation. I can say that while your dog is starting to learn the sensation of the collar and what the stimulation means, they will often just freeze up and look around confused, or try to itch their neck — the same occurs when intensity is raised, it annoys and concerns them if you get outside their comfortable level, so the hope is a similar response, at a minimum, would serve as a backstop if you needed it to.
Emergencies aside, the e-collar has worked wonders in showing our dog that we mean business. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had to practically bargain with her to do the most basic things, like come in from the porch, where she loves sunning herself. Every time we have to negotiate with a treat, and while food motivation is great and all, we want her to respond to the fact that we commanded her, not because we are offering a treat; rather, the treat should be the reward for following our command, not a prerequisite for compliance. The e-collar allows for us to exert enough pressure in most scenarios, and ties well enough to reward, that it motivates her to follow our command. After complying, she does of course still get her treat (otherwise it would stop working), but most importantly, she responds because of the reward association, not because the reward is being dangled right in front of her. When we are holding treats out toward her she will comply with nearly any command, unless and until there is a greater distraction, like a wide open door, which is the entire problem.
Guilt Trip
If this all sounds like we are breaking our dog’s will to resist us, that is because we are. That is literally the outcome of training, to demonstrate that in no situations will you tolerate having less than a complete response, so that when a scenario occurs where compliance is absolutely necessary, you get an honest to gosh best effort. Sometimes folks feel guilty about doing this to their pets, but really, unless you live on a farm and just toss your dog outside to go do whatever, you’re controlling their lives immensely. Dogs typically rely on you to open doors, allow them to come and go, to feed them if they don’t eat responsible amounts (ours is a glutton if allowed), for bathroom breaks, most socialization opportunities, most play opportunities, and so forth.
What’s the difference between having to sit when you say sit, vs being able to completely ignore you? I’d argue from a psychological perspective, almost nothing negative, if anything, having compliance in place helps build a positive relationship with your dog, as you are interacting with him or her often during training and bonding accordingly, and you are also getting what you want out of your pet which creates a positive feedback loop of genuine happiness. Since our frenchie isn’t sitting around trying to think of how to word her next novel, and in fact, seems pretty bored most of the time if we’re not interacting with her, training offers stimulation and increased opportunities for freedom and rewards.
Results
Even though we’ve just wrapped up the full introductory set of classes with the e-collar, we’re already seeing dramatic results. The biggest shift comes as our dog seems to acknowledge that she’s being watched. We help enforce this feeling by using the collar and issuing commands even when we are out of the room but we know she’s gotten into something because we hear it or see it on a camera. As a side effect of this, when she’s collared and on the couch, she’s a model citizen, far more loving and gently-playful vs obstinant and rough-housing. Wearing the collar sends a signal to her that she’s gotta use her workplace ettiequte, not her bar ettiequte.
Another huge change is we’ve been able to more effectively get her to stop chewing things: the molding/trim, whatever cardboard she finds, wooden furniture, and the such. Her favorite thing to do was sit by the door and chew the hell out of the molding there or the wood framing on the floor track for the sliding glass door. Now she just sits politely and looks at us to indicate she’d like to go out. Then, when we let her out, she is much more willing to chew her toy, lay in the sun, or rabble-rouse within reason with us, rather than be destructive to the porch or over-the-top with energy directed at us.
We have been able to accelerate our progress on slack-leash walking as well, which will be huge for getting her to not harm herself when she gets excited, should help avoid her ever slipping her harness, and will lead to us being able to instill better behavior around other animals instead of her usual desire to run over and get really loud at them.
Of course there’s a few downsides, but honestly, they don’t deter us all. First is having to attach that collar to her all the time so she gets used to it; the collar is clunky and unwieldy and gets in the way during play and snuggles. Second are the prongs and how they clearly are not comfortable to her; we reposition the collar frequently to avoid skin irritation and are looking into flexible, shorter prongs, she has however gotten to ignoring it after a couple weeks. Third is having to be consistent with her training, something we always had to do, but now with the collar as a component, it is hard to remember to pick it up and actuate it when we are giving her treats and such.
Better Relationships
You can arrive at a well trained dog without use of an e-collar, but it really serves as a better communication tool that adds to the relationship you have with your dog. If you are anxious about the collar, don’t be, it’s no big deal, well tolerated and super effective at signaling the intensity of your desire to your dog. All training is about consistency, pressure, and enforcement, and the e-collar simplifies all three factors. I highly recommend pushing past any misgivings and trying out the collar if you need to make improvments to your dog’s obedience game. If you do it responsibly it can be a fun, relationship building activity with your pet, with countless rewards, and may even save their life.
Safety Addendum
If you are excited about e-collar training and looking to give a whirl with your own pet, please, for the sake of the safety and wellbeing of your dog, do not just buy whatever unit you can afford from on online retailer, no matter how good the reviews are! I am not here to recommend a particular unit, but in our case we bought what our trainer was selling and that was a specific reason why we returned to him versus doing it on our own. I don’t think there is much, if anything, regulating these units, so please, think about what can go wrong if you make a poor choice. Yes, maybe you save 50–75% off from a more expensive brand, but you deliver much stronger or inconsistent stimulation to your dog. Maybe the collar gets wet and your dog is given a strong and painful shock when you find out the collar isn’t really water resistent. Maybe the materials the product is made from irritate the skin in some fashion. What about the wireless communication technology? Could you imagine a collar that was being activated on your dog around bluetooth devices or your microwave? Or what about one that failed to work when needed because the range turned out not to match claims or is subject to cellular interference? Or maybe every time you press the button you interfere with other devices!
A well made collar will be comfortable to wear for long periods, extremely water resistant at the collar and on the transmitter, show obvious indicators at the collar and on the transmitter of when they are being actuated, will use precise and consistent stimulation, have safety mechanisms to avoid delivering stimulation that is too strong or too long, have appropriate regulatory markings for the wireless portion (FCC here in USA), few/no negative reviews about wireless interference/range, and have a decent warranty backing it with a company you can actually reach. You can always find a clone of an expensive collar, and yes, they might even be made within the same factory side by side, as is often the way of off shores manufacturing, but this is an investment that can harm you or your dog or if it malfunctions, do your research and do not cut corners when purchasing, please! Similarly, incorrect training patterns can be harmful and create reactive behavior. While it is totally possible to take a DIY approach, if you are unprepared to address negative outcomes and don’t have access to good resources on how to do so, you risk doing more harm than good — so I strongly recommend retaining the services of a trainer to help you understand the right approach at least the first time you go down this path.
Thank you for reading if you made it this far, and best of luck to you on your forthcoming adventures with your furry friend!
